Citation Numbers: 9 Ala. App. 251, 62 So. 1018
Judges: Pelham
Filed Date: 6/12/1913
Status: Precedential
Modified Date: 7/19/2022
The appellant filed suit against the appellee in the Birmingham court of common pleas, an inferior court having the same jurisdiction as the courts of justices of the peace, for $68.40, and recovered a judgment for $21.80. The record does not disclose whether the plaintiff’s demand was reduced by set-off or recoupment successfully pleaded, or how the full amount of the plaintiff’s claim was defeated, but that it ay as successfully defended against to this extent is shown by the amount of recovery being less than the amount claimed, and that the plaintiff supposed itself aggrieved at the amount of the judgment rendered, and prosecuted an appeal to the circuit court. When the case was called for trial in the circuit court, the appellee moved to dismiss the appeal on the ground that the appellant had recovered a judgment against the appellee in the court of common pleas, and that the statute does not authorize an appeal from a judgment rendered in favor of the appellant, but only when the judgment appealed from is one rendered against him. The motion was granted, and the appeal dismissed, and it is to review the action of the court in granting the motion that this appeal is prosecuted.
The act establishing the Birmingham court of common pleas 'in section 10 of the act provides “that the law relating to appeals and certiorari in cases from courts of justices of the peace shall apply to appeals and certiorari cases from the court established by * * * this act.” — Local Acts 1911, p. 375. The law
Statutes providing for and regulating appeals should not be narrowly construed to “cut off or fetter the right of appeal,” but should be broadly construed to serve the purposes of their .enactment. — National Union v. Sherry, 61 South. 944, present term. See, also, Grantham v. Payne, 77 Ala. 584; Francis-Chenoweth Hdw. Co. v. Bailey & McConnell, 104 Ala. 566, 568, 18 South. 10.
Reversed and remanded.